Your Brain Works Faster with Nude Bodies

Scientist show that clothes just slow us down. Well, in a way, anyway.

We knew it all along, of course, because we’re so smart (and clearly fond of dirty pictures): The brain responds faster when it’s looking at naked people.

The French Tribune reports that researchers from the University of Tampere and Aalto University in Finland have found that “pictures of nude bodies are more proficiently processed by the human brain than images of bodies that are clothed.”

Study subjects were shown pictures of models of both sexes in various stages of undress and found that the less the model was wearing, the faster the brain would process the images. In fact, “within .2 seconds the brain can process pictures of nude bodies more competently than pictures of clothed bodies, “and the processing time was at its weakest when the models were fully clothed.”

The FT says “it apparently is the evolutionary mechanism for assistance in mate selection that the occipitotemporal N170 component is so prepared, naturally, that it can recognize nude bodies at a very elementary stage of visual processing.”

We like the report but we can’t say we’re surprised … from an unscientific point-of-view, we also have to wonder if we don’t process nudes faster because we like ‘em. Who doesn’t walk into a party and register the chocolate fountain before the veggie tray?